Man Surprises Girlfriend With A Proposal And A Wedding All In One Night

Aw! Talk about a whirlwind engagement.

There are whirlwind engagements, like Meghan Markle’s six-month lead-up to her royal wedding with Prince Harry. And then there’s this: the lightning-fast, two-hour engagement of one New York man, who decided to surprise his girlfriend with an engagement and a wedding all in one night!

According to ABC News, Danny Rios spent five months planning his secret wedding to now-wife Nicole Rios. Because of her lupus, a medical condition that is aggravated by stress, he didn’t want the stressful nature of planning a wedding to make her condition worse. So he decided to organize the proposal and wedding himself and keep it a surprise.

“Nicole kept on saying how she wanted to have people over for an engagement party and then surprise them with a wedding so I knew she was OK with a wedding in the backyard,” Danny told ABC News. With that information in hand, the New York resident got to work, taking care of every detail, from picking out his and her engagement rings to selecting a dress for her and getting it hemmed to the correct height with some help from Nicole’s mom. “I give women so much credit for all the planning they do for weddings,” Danny Rios told ABC. “I kind of turned into a ‘bridezilla’ during it.”

On December 8, Nicole Rios arrived home from a birthday trip to Disney World and was shocked to see the couple’s backyard decorated in twinkly lights and all of their family and friends in attendance. “I didn’t think we’d even be getting engaged for at least a year,” she said. “I was ready to get in my pajamas…I didn’t think this was going to happen.”

Instead, Danny Rios got down on one knee and proposed. Later that night, he surprised her again. “Danny said, ‘You know how much I love you and if you want we can do this tonight. All of our closest friends and family are here,'” Nicole Rios recalled. “He told me to turn around and a dress and tux were hanging there.”